Random stuff

Raelin has been showing off her creative flair lately:

This is a robot made out of dominos

And this is her rendition of some of her plastic animals. I was amazed at how well she could draw from a three-dimensional model--That's hard stuff! (You may have to click on the image to see her drawings)

Last Sunday was a first for the Somers family. We spent the week without Raelin and Ryker. We sent our kids to California with Uncle William and Auntie Raru to visit Mimi (Brice's mom) for the week. They were gone until Friday evening. It was hard to watch them go and we were lonely without them. But we made the best of it :) by going out on dates (thanks, Mom, for lots of coupons and gift certificates) and getting the house in order. Brice and I (and Alaina) went to dinner one night, movies the next, got ice cream the next night, went to a birthday party for our friend BreAn, and went for a fun but strenuous hike (yeah, we're just a little out of shape).

I did a major overhaul of ALL the toys. I pulled out every blessed thing, including the stuff stored in the attic space and dumped it all in the loft:

I purged as much of it as I could. I mean, really, how many toys do two kids need?! I got rid of about 8 bags of toys and it felt great! Unfortunately, when I was done and I looked at how much stuff was left, I still thought it was too much. But they play with it all on a regular basis and there wasn't much junk or knickknacks mixed in with what was left, so I couldn't justify getting rid of it. As much as the mess and clutter drives me crazy, I didn't want to break my kids' hearts by getting rid of their "favorite" toys. So here's what we're left with:

That's right, this is every last toy in the Somers' house except for their set of wooden blocks. Still a lot of stff, but so much better than before. I don't think they've even realized how much is missing! That's what happens when you go from four toys for a month to all this. They didn't even put up a fuss when they watched me give away all their stuff. It had been so long since they'd seen some of it that maybe they didn't realize it was theirs... That's when you KNOW you have too much junk.


As usual, I had some fun taking pictures of Alaina--she's the only one that holds still long enough for me to get more than one shot before running off.

One afternoon, I was hanging out with Brice while he worked on William and Angel's house. Angel and Liam were also there trying to mow the grass (it was too tall to make much progress). Liliana came over for a little bit too.

Cute kids!

And here are pictures from our hike. We wanted to hike Squaw Peak but we started at a trailhead that made for a much longer hike than the 3 miles round trip we were anticipating. We hiked close to 4 miles and barely made it halfway. It was still a fun hike. It was REALLY steep. Our dog had a lot of fun running all over--he probably ran about four times farther than Brice and I hiked. He was surprisingly responsive to my whistle and would come check in when he heard it. He also got a name this weekend. FINALLY!! Meet Cooper!